


Scarecrow Song

by Shriek



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, Extended Metaphors, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-13
Updated: 2017-02-13
Packaged: 2018-09-24 01:09:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9693206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shriek/pseuds/Shriek
Summary: My take on Scanlan deciding to leave with Kaylie.





	

He could have stayed. He could have asked Kaylie to stay with him. Staying is never really stationary with Vox Machina, so the restless parts of her would be satisfied soon enough. She’s one of the few people he’s met who isn’t swayed by him so easily, but she _wants_ to know him. It’s an unexpected thing to see.

He could have introduced his family to his family, properly. But Scanlan doesn’t let himself imagine Kaylie drinking with Pike and Vex. Or playfully taunting Grog. Or watching Percy work. He doesn’t let himself imagine two halves coming together, because one of those halves is already fractured beyond repair.

It wouldn’t be the first time he’s seen it happen. His clever words and quick tunes rarely fail to endear him to people at first meeting. Pull someone’s ass out of a sticky situation with a well placed bluff and they’re bound to want you around. Bring levity to the heat of battle and they’ll continue to be grateful, they’ll continue to like you. But when the straw inside his chest inevitably catches fire, the jokes become noxious smoke, and all the affection they give him becomes dry leaves thrown at their funny little scarecrow Scanlan. 

He knows they care about him, but he can see the care wearing thin too. In the things they notice, and the things they don’t. He let himself get reckless, modifying memories with too little regard, smoking suude before the haze of battle has even begun to fade. He lets the stuffing show, and waits for them to see. He hopes that unlike everyone else before them, they won’t see it and start pulling handfuls out, digging for the heart inside his chest that isn’t there. That they won’t leave him an empty pile of clothes and song when they realize.

And then he wakes up tied to a bed, covered in stinking spoiled pudding.

He just can’t do it again. Kaylie, the one good chance he’d taken, the girl with his eyes and his skills and maybe his straw filled soul, gods help her, saw him break the only promise he ever made to her, and somehow she’s still here. He chased the sound of her music back into his body and woke up like this. Because the rest of them didn’t see a fucking thing. They didn’t see the stretching seams or the bits of him sticking out odd and exposed. They love him, but they just wanted their straw man to get up and dance again. And he can’t stand to wait any longer.

So he rips himself open for them. He shoves all his empty insides in their faces and gets it over with all at once. Because he loves them too, and he can’t stand another moment loving and being loved when he knows they’ll realize the truth eventually. If he breaks their hearts in one shattering blow, he won’t have to spend days and months letting them grind his down to dust. If he had one, that is.

They don’t know him, and if they did, they wouldn’t want him. There’s not enough in him to know and want. He’s so tired of not being known, and of being left behind when he is. So Scanlan does the leaving this time. He does his best to make them hate him, and he leaves with his straw filled heart on fire, his daughter trailing plumes of smoke at his side.

**Author's Note:**

> Like a lot of people, Scanlan deciding to leave hit some painful buttons for me, so this little bit of word vomit happened. I may have projected hardcore. Idk why Scanlan is a scarecrow, he just is, okay?


End file.
